150 Years of Photoshopping

Here's some Paleo-future fodder--or, at the very least, one of those "the more things change, the more they stay the same" moments. From a Boing Boing post: Dartmouth's Hany Farid has pieced together a history of "Photoshopping," beginning in...

Here's some Paleo-future fodder--or, at the very least, one of those "the more things change, the more they stay the same" moments. From a Boing Boing post: Dartmouth's Hany Farid has pieced together a history of "Photoshopping," beginning in 1860 with the picture of Lincoln at left. It's actually a composite of the president's head and the body of Southern politician John Calhoun.

Farid points out that this early instance of photo tampering occurred a mere 34 years after the first photographic image was created.

One of the most interesting things about the story's timeline, which ends in September of this year, is that from the Civil War to Stalinist Russia to Joseph Lieberman's senate campaign, political objectives have consistently played a large role in the art of photo doctoring.

And of course, there are the infamous attempts at making Katie Couric look skinnier in a CBS photo and enlarging Emma Watson's bust on the poster for the IMAX version of Harry Potter--which is also to say that people have managed to find...other uses for photo doctoring too.

Brian Heater has worked at a number of tech pubs, including Engadget, Laptop, and PCMag (where he served as Senior Editor). Most recently, he was as the Managing Editor of TechTimes.com. His writing has appeared in Spin, Wired, Playboy, Entertainment Weekly, The Onion, Boing Boing, Publishers Weekly, The Daily Beast and various other publications. He hosts the weekly Boing Boing interview podcast RiYL, has appeared as a regular NPR contributor and shares his Queens apartment with a rabbit named Lucy.
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